A mum-of-three says she realised she fancied women when she found herself daydreaming about actress Jodie Comer after watching Killing Eve with her husband.
During lockdown, Jennifer Gilmour, 34, couldn't stop thinking about Jodie Comer and Vicky McClure after watching Killing Eve and This Is England with her husband of eight years. At first, Jennifer thought she was simply 'admiring' the actresses, but later realised 'it was something more'.
Bravely speaking about her sexuality to HullLive, Jennifer said: "Over lockdown, my husband had noticed that I was complimentary of the female actresses in the series we were binge-watching. We watched This Is England and I found myself thinking about Vicky McClure for the rest of the day.
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"Then on Killing Eve, it was Jodie Comer. I thought it was admiration but after a while I realised it was more."
Receiving encouragement from her husband, Jennifer explored her interest in women. She said: "My husband suggested that I explore my sexuality and I knew I needed to take the opportunity to figure it out."
Jennifer said In hindsight there were already many signs that she wasn't straight. However, she says she always "ignored them". She said: "I have always had a sense of being gay. It’s just that in my mind I didn’t feel it was even an option to explore it."
Although the past few months have had "extreme highs and challenging lows", the mum also spoke about life after being open about her sexuality. She said: "It took a while to realise that the way I was living with my husband and children wasn’t going to work because it didn’t feel right to me."
"The hardest part was separating from my husband and breaking up the family unit, thankfully we are successfully co-parenting and will remain friends."
Since coming out as bisexual she says she has had great support, including her dad and friends who have been thrilled that she can finally be her true self. Some of the mum-of-three's friends even claimed that they've always suspected that she was gay.
Jennifer said: "My friends have been very supportive and many of them were already a part of the LGBT community. A good number of my friends had suspected for a while that I was either bisexual or a lesbian so it didn’t come as a shock to them."
Jennifer is also highly complimentary of her dad who has been a great support during her coming out. She said: "The most important family member to me is my dad and he has been so supportive of me, he sticks by me no matter what and just wants me to be happy."
The mum-of-three revealed details about her journey of finding who she truly is on her Facebook, sharing an inspirational post on Valentine's Day, proudly saying that she is "falling in love with the new me". Jennifer also wrote about how she fought her true self for many years but now it prevails and shines through, and has now discovered that she is a proud bisexual woman who has a preference of dating women.
She said: "Last year I went through a whole identity crisis. I realised that I was still using the survival tactics from my abusive relationship. It’s taken me eight years to realise that I have still been the person he made me to be. I’ve looked back before that relationship and have always been saddened that I can’t be her. I didn’t realise that it was not about going back but it was about going forward. Not reclaiming myself but becoming myself."
Jennifer has since become a public speaker and author, previously opening up about being in a coercive controlling relationship for several years. Using her personal experiences as a catalyst, she has become an advocate for domestic violence awareness in order to help others who are in similar situations and help them find a way out.
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